Mailbag

The Legislature should put the brakes on SB 568 and consult with the Democratic Party’s 3,300 delegates and congressional Democrats. – Bob Mulholland, Chico

On behalf of The Sacramento Bee’s editorial board, welcome to The Take, your opinion-politics newsletter.

Take a number: 470

In 2014, then Federal Election Commission chair Ann Ravel wrote a brief note announcing she would embark on an inquiry that could have led to some regulation of internet advertising. The commission, she noted, had turned a “blind eye to the internet’s growing force in the political arena.”

It didn’t work out well. As Ravel tweeted last week, “For this, I got death threats courtesy of the Rs on FEC.”

“I can’t imagine the deterrent effect if the federal government were to begin imposing a disclosure regime every time you want to blog about politics,” Goodman said.

“Is this not just basically another shot at censorship on the Net and something of a tremendous overreach?” Ed Berliner asked on Newsmax. It was not to be.

Last week, as detailed in The New York Times and admitted by Facebook, the social network-media giant took $100,000 from what it now believes to be a Russian propaganda organization to place ads between June 2015 and May 2017. Facebook also said it had removed 470 “inauthentic” accounts and pages that were “likely operated out of Russia.” The 3,000 ads were aimed at “amplifying divisive social and political messages across the ideological spectrum — touching on topics from LGBT matters to race issues to immigration to gun rights,” Facebook says in its post.

Perhaps now the FEC will revisit the issue. Or not.

Their take

Seattle Times: Seattle and the state of Washington will continue to benefit from Amazon.com’s remarkable expansion, despite the company’s surprising decision to open a second headquarters elsewhere in North America. Yet there’s no mistaking this is a distressing wake-up call. State and local leaders must respond by assuring Amazon, other large employers and entrepreneurs that Greater Seattle still has the capacity, talent and desire to enable their companies’ growth.

Orange County Register: The surest way for our federal legislature to fail the American people is for its factions to seek absolute triumph at every turn. The rule of law is not worth sacrificing for such hollow victories. For a real win, leaders in both parties must seize the moment this fall.